We had an early start for our last morning in Brisbane, and a 3.5 hour drive north to the village of River Heads, where we’ll leave the car. You see, we’re taking this ferry over to Fraser Island / K’Gari where we’ll stay for the next two nights.
Today started out overcast as yesterday’s system was still clearing out, but we could already get some views of the lush hills with sand poking out underneath the trees. Fraser Island is made almost entirely of sand – it is literally a 123 km long continuous sand dune! This gives it some unique environments, not to mention amazing beach scenery.
Forty minutes after leaving the mainland, we arrived at the jetty at the Kingfisher Bay Resort, the main civilization hub for the island.
We took the little “train” up to the hotel for novelty, since it was only a 5 minute walk from the dock.
The property grounds were a mixed but lush environment, and the buildings seemed like they blended right in with the forest.
Here’s our room for the night.
The skies cleared up and with the sun out, Ellie wanted to enjoy the pool for a couple hours. It was a very nice pool. Ellie made an Australian friend at the pool, Zoe, who was from Brisbane.
Ellie was extremely concerned about dingoes on Fraser Island from her own research, and signs like this at the beach didn’t help.
The beach in this area, the leeward side of the island, are more like mud flats than a nice white sand beach.
The sunsets from the west coast of Fraser Island, where we are, are known to be gorgeous and tonight wasn’t a disappointment.
The lagoon in between the beach and the hotel was so peaceful in the final moments of twilight.
Next morning, we started out down at the dock again, to meet our driver/tour guide John and the tour bus for the next day and a half.
After bouncing through the rugged sand terrain through the forest, we arrived at one of the true jewels of Fraser Island – Lake McKenzie. Being on a sand island, the beach is of course amazing, and the water absolutely crystal clear due to high acidity, inhibiting organic growth.
It’s without question some of the clearest water I’ve ever seen, and it was warm. What a beautiful spot to spend an hour.
We could have easily stayed here all day.
After a post swim snack, we headed a bit further down the trail (in the bus – hard to call it a road) to a short stop in one of the rain forest sections of the island near Central Station. Central Station used to be a hub for logging workers and their families when the island was home to a booming logging industry between 1863 and 1991.
The dry, mixed forest we’d driven through near Lake McKenzie gave way to a lush, moist environment with tall trees, ferns, and palms.
These massive trees – satinay – are only found on Fraser Island – and are an extremely valuable timber. Their characteristics made them ideal for marine piles at docks around the world.
We trundled down the trail again, towards a lunch stop at the K’Gari Beach Resort on the east coast, just inland from the 75 mile beach, which runs the entire length of the island.
The afternoon’s outing was a hike to Lake Wabby. Another lake inland in the dunes, just below a sea of sand to the left behind Ellie, proudly holding her dingo stick. No, it’s not a hiking pole! That’s to scare dingos away/whack them!
Lake Wabby was down a fairly steep hill from the sandy plateau.
The water was more greenish, having plenty of active life, including tiny fish that would give you the famed fish pedicure if you stood still for a few minutes. Better than paying for it!
After we hiked back up the hill, I was enthralled by the inland sea of open sand. It reminded me very much of the hidden ice fields in our mountains at home.
We didn’t see any dingos or snakes on the hike back, but there were some lizards and a really big spider in the trees.
And a very unique tree. I’m not sure what kind this is.
Hey, there we go! A dingo on the way back to the resort for the night!
Ellie really wanted to use the pool at the resort before dinner and gave it two thumbs up, especially with the inflatables.
For our final morning on Fraser Island, we started out with a bucket list item for me – Air K’Gari – a short scenic sightseeing flight that takes off and lands on different sections of the beach!
From up here, you can see how the 75 mile beach just goes on and on….
Here are the inland sand fields near Lake Wabby.
Lake McKenzie.
And more of the gorgeous shoreline. We saw a pod of dolphins below us, very cool.
Here’s the shipwreck Maheno which we’ll visit up close very soon. We’re going to land several kilometres up the beach from where we started.
What a cool flight!! We were the first of three groups to do it from our tour bus, very informal (you just put up your hand if you wanted to go when the bus pulled up at the plane) and just such awesome scenery!
Oh yeah, here’s our bus!
There’s the SS Maheno. There are 6 decks below what we can see, buried by the “sands of time”. The ship ran aground in 1935 and hasn’t moved since.
And how she looked in her heyday in the early 1900s.
As other passengers took their turn on the flight, we moved up the beach some more and stopped at The Pinnacles, an outcropping of colourful sand cliffs.
Look at this endless beach. Doesn’t it look idyllic? Unfortunately, it’s not for swimming, as the currents are extremely strong and there is a very robust population of sharks in these waters.
There were a number of jellyfish left behind by the tide.
We’re heading towards the far north of the island, to the Champagne Pools now. We’ll have about an hour there, but we can’t linger too long as the tide will be coming in while we’re there and some parts of the beach could be treacherous to drive at high tide – the prospect of having to hug the trees in the very soft sand that never sees water and being stuck in a bus is not what you want to do.
We actually had to go up a hill to the parking area for this beach, and then along a boardwalk back towards the ocean. The blackened sticks in the photo are from an enormous fire that burned roughly half of the island in 2020, started by an illegal campfire.
Thankfully John was the one who had to worry about the driving and timing, and we just got to enjoy another wonderful place in nature; only the stairway down the rocky hill (this is part of the 2% of the island that is not sand) is manmade.
From the top of the stairs, here’s Indian Head – the most easterly point on the island, and named by Captain Cook in 1770 when he sighted a number of Natives on this headland, which would have been the Butchulla people at the time, who inhabited the island for an estimated 60,000 years.
This was absolutely a gorgeous stop. The pools are protected from the open ocean by the rocks surrounding them, yet they get the occasional big wave splashing in to refresh them, creating the “champagne” bubbles.
We stopped at Red Canyon for more colourful sand cliffs.
Our copilot is ready to go. She really enjoyed riding in the front and chatting with John.
We stopped again at the SS Maheno for a different view as the high tide was now filling her with seawater.
And then the last, and best stop of the day – Eli Creek!!
Eli Creek is another crystal clear, relatively warm freshwater stream, that has a reasonably swift flow and is perfect for tubing. The ultimate natural lazy river ride. I think we did 6 laps and Ellie wanted to do more!
Sadly we couldn’t stay much longer there as we had to get back to the other side of the island to catch our ferry back to the car. We had a drink and a snack at the beach bar beside the dock with some of our fellow tour passengers while we waited. Here we are back on the ferry.
What a stunning, amazing place to visit. Fraser Island should be on everyone’s Australia itinerary. K’Gari, the Butchulla name for Fraser Island, means paradise. We agree.
Ellie's Adventures 